Critical Review

Do Indexical Images Tell the Truth?

“In both documentary and video journalism, the indexical power of cameras can be harnessed as weapons for truth and shine a light in the darkest of places.”

— Sara Merican, Forbes, 24 Feb. 2021

During my childhood in the 1970s-1980s it was often said that a camera never lies. The assumption was that a photograph reliably recorded the subject matter as it was. Subsequently, image manipulation has become increasingly accessible, so that now anyone with a smartphone and a few apps can do it. The idea that a photograph is always true to life has rapidly become outdated. However, the appetite for objective photography remains, as evidenced by the quote above.

In its introduction to Project 5: Photography 1, the OCA introduces “…the idea that a photograph is ‘indexical’, meaning that it has a direct physical relationship to its object. An image that is excessively manipulated is no longer, strictly speaking, ‘Indexical’”. They add that many news outlets require photo-journalists to submit only indexical photographs, which give the audience realistic images of news events.

In this essay I will argue not only that the concept of indexical/unedited photography is fundamentally flawed, but that no photograph can claim, by itself, to tell the truth.

Viral images creating fake news

InMarch 2022 an image that came to be known as ‘gun and lollipop’ went viral on social media. It was early in Russia’s war on Ukraine and many Ukrainian citizens were fighting alongside the regular army. The image, depicting a nine year old girl holding a gun while sucking a lollipop, fed into rumours of child soldiers staring down Russian tanks.

The photograph, taken by the girl’s father, Oleksii Kyrychenko, was actually taken on 22 February 2022, before the war began. Kyrychenko staged the photograph as a warning of what lay ahead if Russia invaded Ukraine. This context became detached from the image as it circulated on social media, where it became a story about child soldiers.

This is probably an indexical photograph - it shows the scene accurately - but can we say that it tells the truth?

Firstly, the photograph was staged. This, in itself, is not unusual. Portrait photographers set up shots that capture something of the subject. In this case, however, the scene was intentionally staged to show not ‘what is’ but ‘what could be’. Kyrychenko used an indexical image to convey possibility rather than actuality. Secondly, when this image went viral, the meaning was, wrongly, interpreted as ‘what is’. The assumption that a camera reliably tells the truth changed the meaning of the image. It became about children fighting in Ukraine. Social media detaches images from their contexts and the photographers’ intentions, thus creating new untrue stories.

The image is indexical but, both by intent and by usage, it does not tell the truth.

What about pre-digital photography?

Can we say that early photography, which has much more claim to indexicality than digitally manipulated photography,, tells the truth? Perhaps. It shows us how formal group photography was taken at the turn of the 20th Century. It shows us clothing of the period, though it may be assumed that these are clothes reserved for formal occasions rather than everyday wear. It could also be inferred that these children are unnaturally somber - where are the range of expressions that humans use? We could say that this indexical photograph is a true record of the method of formal staged group photography in the late Victorian era, but not much else. What do these children get up to in their normal lives when they’re not being pressed into formal attire and being told to stay absolutely still? What do they look like from behind? Again we come to the issue of staged/composed images. Is a composed shot truly indexical?

Pre-photography editing

Returning to Gun and Lollipop, the fact that the photograph was staged draws our attention to editing that takes place before the photograph is taken. Kyrychenko carefully selected the location from a countless number of other locations in Ukraine, in order to fit his agenda. He took the photograph in Ukraine rather than in, say, Sudan, where a less newsworthy war has been raging for years. In framing an image, photographers use elements of composition to draw the eye to certain features. In these and other ways, millions of possible images are edited out before the photograph is taken.

In my own practice it’s not unusual for me to take 100 photographs, knowing that I will only use about five of them. I intentionally take more images than I need, then discard all but the best. Furthermore, all of the above points apply. I select my location, often editing out locations that are hard to access or too far away - criteria unrelated to the photographic process - hugely limiting the range of photographs I take. I use composition, such as the rule of thirds, or focal points and blur, to frame each image, often auditioning several angles and including or rejecting parts of the scene, before the shutter clicks. Inevitably I choose compositions that express my personality, interests and experience; other people’s photo-streams probably include a lot fewer pictures of drains, for example!

Multifaceted truth and collaborative seeing

Lastly, not only is my photography, whether indexical or not, highly edited in these ways, but so is everyone else’s. When photo-walking with my brother, we have different priorities and produce different images of the same place. Even when we photograph the same scene, we use camera features such as zoom, ISO, shutter speed etc to different effects, all prior to taking a photograph and any image editing that would stop the image being indexical. If 100 people photographed the same subject there would be an even greater array of perspectives, all indexical yet all different. Which one is true? Or are they all different facets of the truth? If we say the latter, how can we then say that one image alone tells the truth? In my photographs of a stone, I explored the stone from many angles, with changes in lighting, and saw that my images hold a partial truth collectively. Not only are they individual to me, but if I photograph the ‘front’ of the stone then I say nothing about its ‘back’. Whether my images are indexical or not, I can’t claim that any one of them is, on its own, true. The truth about the stone could only be conveyed by many people, many angles and many light sources and shadows.

In conclusion, then. If an indexical image has any claim to truth, it is at best a partial truth. No single image of something as simple as a stone can tell more than a sliver of truth about it. Something as complex as a photograph of a possible future has no claim on reality. One indexical image alone does not tell the truth.